Depends on the question. If it's something like, "Rank these items" your top choice should be 1. If it's, "How much do you like" it should be 10 as the best. I guess I see it as similar to the pain scale...1 is the weakest and 10 is the strongest.

Depends on the question. If it's something like, "Rank these items" your top choice should be 1. If it's, "How much do you like" it should be 10 as the best. I guess I see it as similar to the pain scale...1 is the weakest and 10 is the strongest.

I agree. The scale depends on A) what type of question you're asking and B) what quantity you're comparing. The question should make it clear which way the scale goes, or it's useless.

I also agree with Where's the Quiet's examples. You rank things starting with number 1 being the item that best meets the criteria of the question. You can tell it's a "ranking" question when every number must have an item associated with it (best=1, 2nd best=2...). You start from 1 and count down until you either run out of items to rank or arbitrarily cut of the list at a certain number (e.g. a "top 10" list). OTOH, if the question asks you to indicate where the magnitude of something falls between two extremes on a scale of 1-10, then 10 is generally the "strongest" or "largest" end of the scale (the "most" of the quantity considered = the largest number of points). In this case, it's not a question of "best," it's a question of the magnitude of some quantity. For example, if you're scoring pain on a scale of 1-10 where 10 is the strongest pain, then 10 is "most pain" (thing measured), but 1 is "best" (no pain). If you're scoring how well an athlete performs in the Olympics, then 10 is both "closest to perfect" (thing measured) and "best."

Just took one today. It, like all pretty much all the others I've taken, has 10 as the highest. I agree with the previous poster. If you change that around, you'd better be really, really clear as to the instructions (and have an error rate for those who answer backwards). Because people are automatically conditioned to use 10 as the highest rating.

When I was taking Social Stats, we were taught that it didn't matter whether we used 1-10 or 10-1, as long as we were consistent throughout the survey. I always arranged the number scales so that the highest number represented the best (or strongest agreement)